The Colour of Marketing – Is brand colour the secret to success?

Living in this new age of technology we suffer from an information overload on a daily basis. Reports have stated that we are exposed to 34GB of information (equivalent to ~100,500 words) a day outside of work, how are we meant to successfully process all of this information. As well as this, businesses are fighting for the viewers time; on average, 55% of people that click on a web page will spend less than 15 seconds looking at it. Those first couple seconds are vital to gaining the attention of the user. This is where your branding comes into play; it helps build a perception and position in the viewer’s mind. You need your brand to be memorable enough to stay in the their minds, even if they have only got a glimpse of it. When talking about your brand, it’s not only your logo but also your website as a whole, background colour, font, theme and logo.  The colour is the first thing that will stay in their heads. But does it matter what colour you choose though. Would Coca-Cola be any less successful if they chose Purple, probably not. Choosing the colour of your brand may seem like a simple task, however if you consider the psychology behind colours, it becomes a whole different story. Studies have shown that around 90% of information that is processed by the brain is visual and these visuals are processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text. Did you know that every colour can influence our mood and the way we behave? There are a plethora of colour emotion charts out there that describe what mood is related to what colour (like the one below). Even though there is vast amounts research backing this, you would be a fool to base your whole brand on this chart alone. There needs to be context behind the colour that you choose. It would be meaningless if a garden centre chose the colour green solely because it was calm. However, if they chose it because it represented growth and is the international brand of environmental issues, then it has meaning and is relevant to the business.Why is the internet so blue?If you think about the websites you visit everyday, which undoubtedly are social media websites, the majority of them will be blue. Think about it, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Viveo, Foursquare, Skype, all blue, and the list goes on. Blue is known throughout the western world as being a trustworthy, dependable, secure and responsible colour. All of which are important qualities within the social media industry. However, did they all make this conscious decision together? It was recently revealed that Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colourblind, indicating that blue was the colour that stood out most for him. Blue isn’t a far superior colour to the others? Obviously not, but this might be the exact reason why everything is blue. Nobody notices blue, it doesn’t jump out at you or grab your attention like a red or a green would. It is the perfect background colour, it blends into its surroundings. Blue is the colour of the sky and the sea, both of which have been are so dominant in people’s everyday environments. So why is the internet so blue? It’s the same reason we tell our children why the sky is blue. It just is.